In this course, we will examine myths of origin in German literature and thought with a specific focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The course is organized in three units: narratives about the origin of the individual (childhood and the novel of formation), narratives about the origin of man (monogenesis versus polygenesis, anthropology and race), and narratives about the origin of societies and groups (family, state, contract theory). We will read texts by Karl Philipp Moritz, Joachim Heinrich Campe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schlegel, and Sigmund Freud.